For the last two days, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has been playing word games to insinuate that, even though George Bush never said that Saddam Hussein ordered the 9/11 attacks, he implied it. I’ve strung together a few examples of this in the montage below:

George Gooding, who blogs at Seixon.com, has written a post that conclusively debunks Olbermann’s brand of “reasoning”:

… Olbermann doesn’t even need to have his viewers comprehend anything he is showing, all he has to do is emphasize that he is right, and that the president is lying. That’s all it takes. He did this by saying:OLBERMANN: Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda in the same sentence separated by seven words. September 11th and Saddam Hussein, two sentences later, separated by six words. In a moment Craig Crawford joins me to discuss the fundamental remaining question. Who does the President think he’s F’ing kidding?Aha! So the meaning of a sentence is not determined by its content, but by the number of words between certain phrases! Kind of reminds me of Media Matters claiming that Hardball is conservatively biased, just because it had more conservative guests in the first two months of 2006. You know, using numbers instead of actually evaluating the content.
Alright Olbermann, I’m game. Let’s look at another statement:[Saddam Hussein] has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of [Saddam Hussein’s] involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.OK, so playing Olbermann’s word game, this brings us to